Todd, Tim and Kellan Cook love Baseball, the Seattle Mariners and trekking around the country to visit stadiums and watch games. These are their stories. #FatherSonBaseball

Results tagged ‘ Jacobs Field ’

Only once before have I broken the normal protocol and started an entry at the middle of a game, rather than at the beginning. It was for our third game at Fenway back in July, and the purpose was to explain Ken Griffey Jr.’s fourth inning single off of the Green Monster. At the time, it was the first and only hit Tim had ever seen Griffey collect. It was a truly special moment. You can read all about it here.

Once again, I am happy to brake with tradition. Once again, I will start my story with zero outs in the top of the fourth inning. Once again, the story will involve my favorite player of all time, Mr. Ken Griffey, Jr.

Guess what, when we arrived at The Jake and checked the Mariners line-up, Griff was in there – scheduled to hit clean-up and DH. That’s a good start.

Before the season started, I sat down at my computer, pulled up a bunch of MLB schedules and drafted the official “Todd & Tim Cook 2009 Baseball Agenda.” I then emailed the Agenda to a select group of “Important People” (family, friends, etc.) and invited people to join us on our ride through the 2009 season. Along with the agenda, I included the following note detailing the goals I had in mind when drafting the agenda:

At the beginning of the day, with 26 games under our collective belt on the season, Tim and I had covered most of the goals: “All 30 Teams” – check; Baseball Roadtrip – check; 10+ stadiums (including HHH Metrodome, Nationals Park, New Yankee Stadium and Citi Field) – check; Continue 9/12 Baseball Anniversary tradition – check (we’ll be at Yankee Stadium on 9/12/09 for the third anniversary of Tim’s first game); and Have Fun and Make Memories – check.

Due to a chain of events including a miscommunication, a late invite to the Outer Banks and a Citizens Bank Park sell out, goals 6-7 had to be re-scheduled a couple times and, ultimately, suspended until next season.

But goal number one was left incomplete. In what might have otherwise gone down as a perfect season of baseball fandom, the most important task was left undone. The mere possibility of it was the entire reason for this trip. To see my boyhood (and, heck, my adulthood) baseball hero blast a homerun and share the moment with my son was all I wanted out of this season.

Enter, Fausto Carmona and the top of the fourth inning. Tim and I were out on the bridge that connects The Jake to a parking lot behind the LF bleachers. He’d been a little grumpy because he hadn’t had a nap, plus I think he was a little bit hungry. Colleen went down to Heritage Park and was in line to buy some pizza. I was holding Tim in my arms and this was our view:

Carmona started Griff off Ball 1, Ball 2. Then he reached back and hurled a 93-mph 4-seem fast ball that caught wwwwwwaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy too much of the plate……and this happened (picts courtesy of MLB.com screen shots)…

Right off the bat, it looked like a home run. However, Grady Sizemore was going back on it like he thought he might have a play on it. Worse yet, the roof of the batter’s eye bar was in my way. I could tell it would land out of view on the other side of the roof. So, I ran toward RF down the bridge until the roof was no longer in play. I saw Sizemore run out of room and the ball bounced sideways off something in the CF seats, took one big hop and was gloved by a lucky fan. Here was the estimated flight path of the ball (as estimated unscientifically by me):

…the guy cirlced on the right is the lucky guy who took home No. 624 on Griff’s career.

Due to the odd angle looking down from the bridge, I couldn’t tell for sure if it was a home run until the second it bounced in the seats. But the second it bounced, I jumped in the air with Tim still in arms and gave a little shout: “YESSSSS!!!”

I immediately began fidgeting with my pocket to try to get my camera out, but I had a wardrobe malfunction and couldn’t get it out of my pocket until right before Griff crossed the plate. This is the only shot I got of our magical moment in Cleveland:

When we arrived home late that night, I watched the video highlight of Griffey’s home run on MLB.com, and I was excited to see that (although you cannot make us out) you can see me and Tim (the blue (my jersey) and white (the front of my hat) blob) moving across the bridge during the highlight of Griff’s bomb. Here is a screen shot that shows Griff’s HR ball in the air and Tim and me on the bridge:

And there you have it: our number one goal of the season completed! Never did I imagine 20 years ago, as an eighth grader going to games with my folks and marvelling at Griffey hitting homeruns in the Kingdome, that some day I would be in Cleveland, Ohio and witness the Greatest Mariner of All-Time hit a home run for the M’s while spending an afternoon at the ball park with my son. It was truly incredible.

And, as my mom said to my dad while watching the game on TV some 2,500+ miles away, “that home run just made Todd’s whole trip.” It did. In fact, it made my whole season.

Now…I hope to get a chance to do it again!!

Okay, now that we have the most important part of the game covered, why don’t we go back and start from the beginning. It was kids’ day at the park. Outside the LF entrance, they had all sorts of games and events for kids. Like these little peddle cars that Tim drove around a little coned track:

After Tim drove this car, Colleen and Tim played around some more while I went into the Jake and watched the last few minutes of Mariners BP. I hadn’t gotten much in terms of stadium pictures the day before, so I needed to tour around a bit.

I headed to home plate where I got this panaramic view:

I headed down to the front row and tried to walk down the 1B line in that big red front aisle, but I got booted out. Apparently, that aisle is only for really special people. Since it was such an important aisle, I took a picture of it…

…the guy standing at the end of the red aisle is the guy who booted me out of the aisle.

Two seconds later, Colleen called me and I headed back over to LF and met up with her and Tim.

We had excellent seats in the second deck just above the Mariners bullpen. So we headed over there to check things out.

Colleen sat in our seats while Tim and I hung out in the front row where this was our view…

…as we watched Felix Hernandez warm up:

After playing catch in the OF, Felix went into the bullpen and pitched off of the mound to M’s back-up catcher Rob Johnson. (I’ll still call Kenji Johjima our starter). It was pretty funny watching Felix warm up. We actually couldn’t see Felix because the mounds are under the second deck. So we could just see the ball fly into view and into Johnson’s glove.

All of a sudden Tim started yelling down to Johnson: “Hey, sneakers! Hey, sneakers! Can you throw me a ball sneakers! Hey, sneakers! Hey, sneakers! Hey, sneakers!”

I asked Tim why he was calling Johnson sneakers and explained his name was Rob Johnson. Tim responded, “That’s sneakers. Sneakers is my friend.”

I asked him why he called him sneakers. “He’s wearing sneakers.” Of course!

A few minutes later, the Mariners relievers marched out to take their spot in the bullpen:

Above to the right is the aftermath of a hilarious scene that I missed photographing. (I was wearing a new pair of shorts and I could never seem to get my camera out of the cargo pockets in time!). Mariners closer David Aardsma is standing at the bottom. Two seconds before this shot, he just finished going down that line of relievers having each of them smell the inside of his hat. Each reliever buried his face in Aardsma’s cap and then they would chat about how it smelled. It was pretty hilarious — much more hilarious than this picture of the aftermath of smellfest.

Soon, the game started. Just then, Tim spotted the kids’ funland that was situated directly behind our section (section 316). Here is a photo:

As MLB stadium play areas go, this one is pretty weak. If you have young kids, you’ll notice that everything in here is something you probably have in your playroom or back yard, or maybe your friends’ have it in their playroom or back yard. Nothing special here. Step 2, the manufacturer of all this stuff, is headquartered just outside of Cleveland. I guess that is why they have an all-Step 2 play area. Whether it was comparatively weak or not, Tim still loved it in there. He never wanted to leave he was having so much fun. Therefore, Colleen hung out with him and I watched the Mariners bat from the standing room counter behind our section. It looked like this:

…and then I went on a little stadium tour. I started by climbing to the top of the upper deck in RCF:

Next, I headed across the rows to the RF foul corner:

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Here are a couple more picts showing the empty upper deck concourse in RF and an incredibly steep look down to the RF foul pole:

The view from the top behind home plate:

Then, an Indian hit a liner to CF and Franklin Gutierrez came running in to make the play…

And, I got some shots of the bullpens:

This is interesting. Exactly like the bullpens at Nationals Part, the bullpen in the RF corner (to the right) is field turf, but the bullpen in CF (to the left) is real grass. Odd, huh? In D.C., I thought it was because there was an entrance from the employee-only (worker) level concourse where they could bring tractors, etc., through the bullpen to the field. I figured they put in turf so the heavy equipment passing through the bullpen wouldn’t get damaged. But I didn’t notice a similar tractor entrance in Cleveland. I’m not sure why one bullpen is grass and the other is turf.

Here is a view into the Mariners dugout — where Griffey (pre-home run) can be seen chatting up some of his teammates):

He came to the plate while I was passing by, so I took this picture of Tim’s friend “sneakers”:

After sneakers, I took a couple shots of Ichiro that I combined to make this:

That swing resulted in a single up the middle for Ichi’s 184th hit of the season.

I headed up to the upper corner in LF where I got this view:

After the tour, I met up with Colleen and Tim. Tim still didn’t want to leave the play area. But we got him out of there in time to witness Griff’s bomb, as described above.

So, remember I mentioned Colleen was in line for pizza when Griff hit his home run? Well, she wasn’t able to get any. She is a vegatarian and when she got to the front of the line, they had just given away the last slice of cheese pizza. All that was left was pepperoni. So she came back and met up with us again.

After a little bit, we went back and I stood in the incredibly short but frustratingly slow pizza line. While in line, I took this picture of King Felix:

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There were literally only 2 people in front of me in line for pizza. But before I made my way to the front of the line, Felix retired the side, the teams switched positions, and Griff came to bat. I was forced to abandon my spot in line to go watch Griff’s at bat, and take this picture:

Unfortunately, the home run was Griff’s only hit on the day, so this at bat didn’t end well.

After Tim got some pizza in him (yes, I eventually did make it through the pizza line), Tim forgot about the play area and we relocated to the LF bleachers so he wouldn’t see the playarea again.

Here is Tim out in the bleachers:

Here was our view from the bleachers:

Tim and I had fun eating sunflower seeds out in the bleachers, and Tim had a blast spitting seeds:

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the Mariners day. We wouldn’t push any more runs across the plate after Griff’s home run. Meanwhile, Felix had an off-day. The Mariners lost 6-1.

It was Kids Run The Bases day, but we had a six hour drive following the game, and Tim really needed a nap in the car so we headed out.

Despite two terrible losses, it was great to see our Mariners once again this season, and it was OUTSTANDING to see Griff hit his 624th home run of his career.

After returning home from Boston back in July, it started to hit me that, if Griff decides to retire after this season (and I sincerely hope he DOES NOT), Tim and I would never see him play again. I didn’t like that idea. So I reviewed the rest of the M’s schedule to see if they would visit anywhere even remotely near southeastern Pennsylvania.

They had one more trip to Cleveland on the books. Cleveland is in northeastern Ohio, and Ohio borders Pennsyvlania to the West. I determined that fits within the definition of “anywhere even remotely near southeastern Pennsylvania.”

Therefore, just 4 days removed from the conclusion of a wonderful roadtrip with my dad, Tim, my wife Colleen and I piled into the car and headed across Pennsylvania on the PA Turnpike.

After camping out a night in Washington, PA, we headed north up the Ohio turnpike to Cleveland and after taking 80N-to-480W-to-77N-to71 we cruised into town on 9th Street and this was our view:

Ah, Jacobs Field…the Jake. (I think that is a typo on the sign, that’s not how you spell ‘Jacobs’). It was good to be back to the first field where Tim ran the bases. And it was great to be in the same city as the Mariners.

We came into the city early to see what we could see in the Land of Cleve. Unfortunately, we knew nothing about the city…except that its on a BIG lake. We ended up driving through downtown and spotting the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame and the Cleveland Browns Statium. So we turned left down a street heading toward the water. Next, we turned right down a long road that ran by some water and an airport before finally reaching a marina. Here are some pictures of what we saw:

Check out that lake! Tim was asleep when we pulled up to the marina. We woke him up and pointed out the huge lake. He responded, “No, Daddy. That’s not a lake. That’s an ocean!” Its big. In that top right picture, that’s the R’n’R Hall of Fame. Below, is a Blue Angels jet resting on a stand in front of a Navy facility by the airport. Pretty cool stuff.

And, that was the extent of our city touring. We had a game to go to!

After parking in a garage a few blocks away, we walked up to a misty Jacobs Field. The clouds were just spitting a little bit. No need for an umbrella or a hood. And I figured it would be no problem for BP.

I was wrong.

Colleen and I had made a deal. We would come early to this game so I could watch some BP. But we wouldn’t come early the next day (which was a day game and might not have BP anyway). But as a approached the gates, I could see the in field was covered. No BP.

There was a sign that said the stadium was open at Gate C. So walked over to Gate C in RCF:

We’d never entered through Gate C before (we’d only been here once before). Below to the far left, that is what it looks like…

In front of the Gate C entrance, there is a statue of Bob Feller (middle) with which Tim posed. I didn’t think it was a very good statue, at least compared to the extremely life-like statues at U.S. Cellular Field. [NOTE TO THE MARINERS: When Griff does eventually retire, use whomever made the statues at U.S. Cellular for his statue. Also, use a classic Griff pose, not the pose with both arms over his head after hitting a home run.]

As we entered Gate C, there were two display cases just inside the gate with lists of the two teams’ starting line ups. Oh, no…no Griff!

Despite my disappointment (which I was prepared for because I knew a lefty was pitching for the Indians), I thought it was a cool feature to have the line-ups posted like that.

Below is a view of the RF concourse…

…we quickly learned that we were trapped in the RF seats and/or concourse until 6:00 p.m. — a full a hour away…and most of the food stands were not yet open (and as I mentioned, no BP). What ever would we do to kill the time?

We walked down into the field level seats as close to the RF foul pole as we could get (the Mariners bullpen is between the seats and the foul pole. Here was our view:

As shown above, there were a couple Mariners on the field. David Aardsma ran out to the bullpen (shown above) to grab some baseballs for playing some catch with his colleagues in the M’s bullpen.

The big draw on the field was Ichiro. He played catch (with his interpreter, I believe)…

…and then he did some running.

Then a couple Mariners relief pitchers played catch by the tarp over the in field. Because we were stuck in RF, we couldn’t get very close. I couldn’t recognize anyone from out there except David Aarsdma.

Ardsma and his buddy were the last two playing catch. His partner threw a ball passed him that rolled out and sat in the grass just off the tarp behind second base. Aardsma pulled another ball out of his pocket and finished playing catch.

When he was finished, he walked out to grab the ball behind second. We were now all alone in the seats in RCF. I called out, “Hey, D.A.!!!!!”

The D.A. immediately picked up the damp ball and threw it REALLY far and directly into my glove:

In this picture of Tim, that is Aardsma to the left of Tim’s head. D.A. threw the ball to us from about 2 feet behind the tarp right behind where Tim is holding up the ball. It was a great throw.

After throwing the ball to us, a bunch of people in RF yelled Aardsma’s name and he turned and threw his other baseball on a line all the way to the back of the RF seats. The throw was very impressive.

Here is a panaramic view from where we caught the ball from Aardsma:

And here is a look to our left. Check out how thick the OF wall is. I’m not sure, but this seems to be designed so people do not interfere with borderline homeruns:

By the way, Aardsma’s second throw landed at the top of that last section, just under the overhang.

Here is a view to our right:

The red arrow points to our seats in Section 184, Row B. They were excellent seats.

Next, we went to Heritage Park.

Heritage Park is the Indians’ outdoor Hall of Fame. Its pretty cool. As you can probably tell from the bottom picture, Tim and I played catch in Heritage Park. Colleen didn’t think it was appropriate to play catch in there. I told her they’d tell us to stop if they didn’t like it.

After a couple minutes, a stadium usher type standing behind the plaque in the bottom left corner of the picture above called me over. Uh, ho. I figured we were, indeed, getting shut down. I walked over to him.

Todd – “Yes?”

Usher – (pulling a baseball from his pocket and whispering while staying behind the column) “Throw this one back to him.”

So, how about that? Instead of getting told not to play catch in Heritage Park, we were rewarded with a ball. Not bad.

“Thanks, Usher-guy.”

Tim was happy to add another ball to his collection.

After playing some more catch, we walked down the stairs to the lower section of Heritage Park. While down there, Colleen found this:

This was literally the first and only plaque Colleen read. So, as a big-time migraine sufferer, she was mighty surprised to see she’d picked the plaque of a ball player whose “Career was curtailed after 1941 season by migraine headaches.” That is something you don’t hear every day.

Finally, they opened the rest of the stadium. We were eating some nachos by this time. We relocated to the seats just a little bit down the line from 1B. We were at the top of the section when two individuals popped out of the M’s dugout and started walking toward the bullpen. One of them was Jason Phillips, whom you might remember from our trip to New York and Boston in July. We had a couple interactions with Phillips in Boston and New York this season, and he’d already given us 5 baseballs so far this season.

I ran down to the first row and arrived there just as he passed:

Todd – “Hey, Jason!”

Phillips – (looks over and give me a big smile) “Hey, how you doing, buddy?”

Todd – “Good, man. Nice to see you. Any chance of you hooking us up with a warm up ball today?”

Phillips – (I couldn’t understand exactly what he said, but it was something like) “I’m sure we can make that work.”

Then he said something like, it would be a little bit because he had to do some stuff first.

I went up to talk to Colleen and Tim. And we relocated down to the bottom of the field section. Eventually, Jason and Felix Hernandez started playing catch, and we watched:

Then Felix and Jason walked back into the dugout. As Jason walked away, he looked over to me and held up a finger as if to say, “Hold on a minute.”

It didn’t do a very good job. A chalk line looks about 10,000 times better than this painted line, even after the guy took two passes at it.

We scoped out the bullpen, which has a seating area in the front with the pitching mounds behind…

…just above the OF fence in foul territory, we noticed what looked like a wedding party.

In a little bit, Jason came back out and went into the bullpen again. Again, he looked over to us and gave us the “hold on a minute” finger. He put on some shin guards in the bullpen and grabbed his catchers mitt.

Then he walked out of the bullpen, came straight over to us and set a nice looking ball showing some warning track dirt marks into my glove.

Then we all posed for a picture:

“Thanks, Jason!” He has been mighty cool to us this season and I am hoping he sticks on with the Mariners as bullpen catcher and eventually as a coach (that is, unless he has an opportunity to make a comeback as a player).

Next, we headed out to our seats in the LF bleachers — Section 184.

I trudged up the stairs and into the upper CF corner in Section 185 and took this panaramic view:

I didn’t get much in the way of action shots at this game. But here is a classic Ichiro pose:

Here is Mike Saunders, who made an error in LF and got hounded for the rest of the game by a bunch of guys three rows behind us:

There is our OF corps for the night:

Of course, Tim wanted to play catch several times during the game. And he wanted to play in the tunnel from the LF concourse into the LF bleachers. I told Tim we’d certainly get kicked out of the tunnel and told to either stop or move elsewhere…

…I was wrong. Instead, we were encouraged by the Section 184 usher. In fact, you can see him watching us in the picture to the right. He thought it was great that we were playing catch in the tunnel, even as people passed in and out of the tunnel.

Here is another action shot: (i) to the right, Fister nailed someone in the head (he was okay) and everyone gathered around to check him out and (ii) Josh Wilson about to catch a pop up…

…see that bat boy running in from the right side in the Josh Wilson pop-up picture? There was a runner on 3B and that kid came sprinting in like he was Usain Bolt. The guy behind us got all excited and thought it was the runner trying to score. He was right to get excited. It was pretty strange to see that bat boy come sprinting in like that.

Midway through the game, the Indians mascot, Slider, came to our tunnel with a pizza and gave it to some guy in Section 185. Tim and I left our seats and I asked Slider’s chaperone if we could get a picture with slider — of course we could:

A great picture. But what exactly is slider supposed to be?

Soon it was time for ice cream. We had to walk to the Pierre’s booth behind home plate. On the way, I took this action shot of Mariners rookie pitcher, Doug Fister, through the foul pole:

The Jake has some interesting art hanging around the park. Here is one of Pronk.

Pierre’s had real ice cream and multiple desirable flavors at a reasonable price! I couldn’t decide if Tim would enjoy chocolate chip mint or moose tracks better. So we got both and shared them both:

Tim loved having two flavors.

The game itself was a good one, but disappointing. The Mariners led most of the game on the strenth of an Indians error and a Russell Branyan HR in the first inning. But we wouldn’t score again and the Indians would tact on a run at a time in three different innings. The game headed to extras.

Griff didn’t play, but I could see him in the dugout…

…he started carrying around a bat while wearing his batting gloves. The M’s had pinch hit for DH Mike Sweeney late in the game (or maybe it was pinch ran for him) with Ryan Langerhans. I was sure Griff would pinch hit for Langerhans in the 10th or 11th inning. With his bat in hand, it looked certain. But then the Indians brought in another lefthanded reliever, and the M’s kept Langerhans in to bat. So, no Griff. Bummer

Late in the game, Colleen wore my new grey zip-up sweat shirt. And Tim wanted to share the hood:

Tim was happy to have “mommy” join us for this game.

In the bottom of the 11th, Luis Valbuena (a former Mariner) hit a walk off homerun. Double bummer.

To make up for dissappointing us by beating our M’s, the Indians put on a huge and extremely cool Rock’n’Roll Fireworks show. We had to relocate to the infield seats (you’ll see why below). On our way, we got a nice family picture (featuring Colleen’s nice new hairdo and fireworks being set up behind us).

Here’s why we had to move, we would’ve been blasted with fireworks:

The initial blast scared Tim. Then he started enjoying the fireworks…but finally the loud music put Tim to sleep…

…so we took off early to beat the traffic.

We would be back the following day and we’d be hoping with all our might that Griff would be in the line-up.

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